Tag "Mylan"

22 March 2017, 17:53
Generic drugmaker Mylan NV has recalled about 81,000 EpiPen devices in countries outside the United States, following two reports of the life-saving allergy shot failing to work in emergencies.

21 October 2016, 18:08
Sen. Elizabeth Warren is angry again — this time about the $465 million settlement Mylan agreed to pay to settle claims the drug giant shortchanged the federal government in rebates to Medicaid for EpiPens.

07 October 2016, 20:01
Heather Bresch, CEO of embattled drug maker Mylan, testified before a House panel last week that one of the main reasons the company had to hike up the prices on its signature EpiPens from $100 to $600 is the "more than one billion dollars" it has invested in the past decade "to enhance the product and make it more available."

04 October 2016, 17:50
The disregard for children's health that Mylan CEO Heather Bresch demonstrated in her testimony to the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee directly harms consumers.
Less directly, Mylan's exceptionally high price increases erode public confidence in all medical companies, including those investing billions in research to help people suffering from life-threatening diseases.

03 October 2016, 19:33
What Mylan gets away charging for a life-saving allergy treatment that has no viable alternative and requires annual replacement is a perfect example of the dysfunction of the healthcare system in this country, Aaron E. Carroll writes in the New York Times.
The EpiPen, which pharmaceutical company Mylan bought nine years ago, is a special product indeed, according to Carroll, a professor of pediatrics at Indiana University School of Medicine. For the 1% to 2% of people liable to develop anaphylaxis as part of their allergic reaction, simple diphenhydramine administration simply won’t do, he writes.
EpiPen does two things that makes it special: it delivers epinephrine, aka adrenaline, in a carefully measured dose, and does it through a device that is close to fool-proof to use, according to Carroll.
But the fact that, as of May, a double pack of EpiPens costs over $600 highlights the problem with the U.S. healthcare system, he writes. Much of the blame lies with the government and not the profit-minded Mylan, however: the FDA encourages the use of EpiPen, but does nothing to regulate its price, according to Carroll.
Mylan is charging more than 450% more for a pair of EpiPens than they cost just in 2004, and that’s after adjusting for inflation, he writes. When the company bought it, EpiPens cost $57 each — but the company has been raising the price continuously despite the product remaining essentially the same because they have almost no real competition, Carroll writes. And that’s in large part thanks to the federal government, he writes.

14 September 2016, 19:33
Pharmaceutical giant Mylan has said it expects its planned generic version of its brand-name EpiPen to eventually account for more than 85 percent of all sales of its auto-injector anti-allergic reaction devices, possibly "saving patients and the healthcare system more than $1 billion."

12 September 2016, 18:02
Mylan says middlemen and suppliers have forced them to jack-up the prices on EpiPens by hundreds of dollars, but two industry insiders say the company pays no more than $30 per device.
Meanwhile, some patients are forced to pay a little over $600 out of pocket for a two-pack of the lifesaving medication. Mylan sparked outrage last month when it was revealed the company had hiked up costs for the drug by over 400 percent since it acquired the brand.
A third expert pegs Mylan's cost even lower, at about $20. Kevin Deane, a partner with the PA Consulting Group, a global technology and design firm that sold a drug delivery technology company to Pfizer in 2004, told NBC News that the base components for each EpiPen, including the plastic cap, tube, and needle, might cost between $2 to $4 to purchase. Pharmacists contacted by NBC estimate that the epinephrine inside costs less than $1.
Additionally, based on industry norms, Mylan would have to pay a licensing fee to companies involved in research and development of the device. This amount might generally multiply the price that Mylan pays Pfizer's wholly owned subsidiary Meridian Medical Technologies, which manufactures the epinephrine auto-injector between two and five times, said Deane.

31 August 2016, 18:56
Mylan's unusual decision to introduce an identical, generic EpiPen competitor follows a week of pressure to lower the price of its lifesaving allergy drug — but some are now questioning whether the move, designed to appear as a price-lowering measure, may in fact net Mylan more revenue than the original version.
The generic version of EpiPen will have a list price of $300 for a two-pack, about half that of the branded EpiPen, Mylan said Monday. It'll be "AB-rated," meaning pharmacists can automatically swap in the generic version for the brand.
But wait: Last week, Mylan broke out the economics of the branded EpiPen supply chain. Out of the $608 list price, it said it nets just $274 per EpiPen 2-Pak, after rebates to pharmacy benefits managers and cuts taken by others in the chain, such as distributors and pharmacies.
So if the generic has a list price of $300, and Mylan doesn't need pay out as much to the rest of the supply chain, what will the net price be of generic EpiPen?
Mylan declined to comment. But that is a key question analysts and investors are now puzzling over.
"It's clever," American Enterprise Institute fellow Dr. Scott Gottlieb said in an e-mail Monday. It "lets them reset the price and not rebate on the 'generic.' They could actually end up making more net money per unit on the generic."

25 August 2016, 19:50
Shkreli — who famously insulted members of Congress earlier this year but refused to testify officially over his own decision to increase the price of a life-saving pill — is now hopping at the chance to defend generic drug manufacturer Mylan.
He may even have opened the door to testify before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, where he previously cited his Fifth Amendment's right to avoid incriminating himself.
"Any chance i can come through this time and actually testify?" he tweeted Thursday in a post directed at the committee's Democrats.
All of this now paves an unlikely new friendship between Shkreli and Mylan CEO Heather Bresch.
Heather Bresch created about $15 billion in value for Mylan in the seven years since she stepped up as president of the company. A big part of that value add came from her talent for repackaging off-the-shelf drugs into bona fide blockbusters.

23 August 2016, 19:18
Two senior lawmakers on the U.S. Senate's Judiciary Committee on Monday pushed for information regarding sharp price increases for EpiPens, drug-filled injectable devices used by people to counter potentially deadly allergic reactions.
Senator Chuck Grassley, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, wrote Mylan Chief Executive Heather Bresch on Monday to ask how Mylan determined the price of EpiPens and what changes had been made to the product to account for the higher price.
The top Democrat on the committee's antitrust subcommittee, Senator Amy Klobuchar, urged the Federal Trade Commission on Monday to investigate the prices, citing news reports showing that the price of a pack of two EpiPens had gone from $100 in 2008 to $500 this year. Mylan acquired the product in 2007.
"Although the antitrust laws do not prohibit price gouging, regardless of how unseemly it may be, they do prohibit the use of unreasonable restraints of trade to facilitate or protect a price increase," wrote Klobuchar, a Minnesota Democrat who said her daughter relies on an EpiPen.

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Shkreli — who famously insulted members of Congress earlier this year but refused to testify officially over his own decision to increase the price of a life-saving pill — is now hopping at the chance to defend generic drug manufacturer Mylan.
He may even have opened the door to testify before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, where he previously cited his Fifth Amendment's right to avoid incriminating himself.
"Any chance i can come through this time and actually testify?" he tweeted Thursday in a post directed at the committee's Democrats.
All of this now paves an unlikely new friendship between Shkreli and Mylan CEO Heather Bresch.
Heather Bresch created about $15 billion in value for Mylan in the seven years since she stepped up as president of the company. A big part of that value add came from her talent for repackaging off-the-shelf drugs into bona fide blockbusters.

Donald Trump is talking about Hillary Clinton’s health, as are two doctors who havenever evaluated Clinton. They have apparently diagnosed her with all kinds of ailments using the long disproven Fox-Drudge equation.
This attention on Clinton has renewed some interest in the letter Donald Trump released last year from his personal physician.

Even as doctors enter a medical field with more paying patients under the Affordable Care Act and unprecedented numbers of job opportunities, 25 percent of “newly trained physicians” would still choose another field if they could, according to a new analysis.